When Guitar Hero was still going strong I remember reading an article somewhere about how the portable music players were doomed. People would no longer be interested in buying music to listen to it, they would instead be playing music games. After the whole music game fad wore out Guitar Hero and Rock Band have been discontinued.

Social networks and gaming are a fad now because mobile computing is a fad. The games are easy to get into, and easy to get out of. They're only meant to be played for a few minutes at a time and then forgotten. They're something you can enjoy on your phone while waiting at the DMV but the experience is shallow. The actual amount of time an individual plays one is just a tiny fraction of what someone might spend playing a traditional game. Almost all social gaming revenue is from advertising. It's not the type of experience normal people are willing to pay for.

[/quote] And the "bashing a console while knowing nothing about it" award of the day goes to...[/quote]

Yea! I win!... Um and what exactly do you have to say in the defense of such a pitiful piece of machinery? Can you actually point out what is good about a Wii? Will you sing the praises of this technical marvel or will you fail in your quest to enlightened (well, enlightening)... Tune in next time folks to see if he can back his jokes with intelligence!

jawakiller:Wait. Nintendo is criticizing casual games?! Nintendo is one to talk. Hell what was the Wii? A console created to play casual games. I have yet to play one game on the Wii that I can take seriously. Have you played Modern Warfare on the Wii? Absolute shit. Don't like being the devil's advocate but Wii needs to step up their consoles or stop trash-talking Farmville (which I think sucks but thats beyond the point).

LOL I was also confused, I thought Nintendo liked casual games this gen. They do need to step up their game but they don't need to stop trash talking Farmville.

There are a few things hurting (or will hurt) the industry IMO.

- Social gaming. It's a fad folks and when people finally get tired of nagging their friends for virtual cows they may leave with a bitter taste, for video games in general, in their mouth. Microtransactions that go with some social gaming isn't helping either which leads me to my next point.

- DLC. This gen game prices have practically doubled from last gen. In addition to the extra $10 that now even PC gamers have to pay, DLC adds $30 or more to the cost of a game. In the end, what was $50 for a full, complete game last gen is now closer to $100 or more. To make matters worse, most people admit that DLC is rarely worth the cost. There are alot of bitter gamers out there who know content is pulled out of a game to be sold separately and sometimes on DAY ONE or as a DRM scheme (Project $10) which leads me to my next point.

- Intrusive DRM. What used to be an inconvenience has now become a huge problem locking honest gamers out of what they paid for while giving pirates a superior product. It just can't go on this way.

Hehehe, thats funny. Nintendo being doomed. Do you know how much Pokemon Black and White are going to bring in? Nintendo is far from debt, because if they even get close, they can just start licensing their songs and public figures out.

Seriously, in no way will phones and Apple beat Nintendo in the handheld market. Let's see, do I want to buy a handheld like the 3DS coming out, which will be a one time cost, and then I can buy games one at a time when I have the money, and then not pay anything after I have the games I want and keep on playing them until by some freak accident that they get broken, or do I buy some overly expensive phone that happens to play games that I have to pay a monthly plan to keep the phone active which in the long run considering the possible life of the phone, will cost 10 or more times than what I would end up paying for my experience with the 3DS.

I'll stick with Nintendo on this one.

Though I do agree with Iwata about all the crap that social games are bringing to the industry.

And on that, Brian Reynolds is a complete moron. Well Brian, I expect better things from a person that considers himself a game maker. He apparently knows nothing about the so called "games" that he makes. Out of all the people that play Zynga's games, I would say about 0.000001% actually socialize with the people that are also playing the games.

Spamming your "stranger" friends in Farmville with gifts and gift requests doesn't count as socializing. Even if you say "ty" or "please" in the message box, it doesn't count.

More socializing goes on in one day of a game like WoW than in an entire year or more of those Facebook money sinks.

Sadly, my Mom plays Farmville. And from what I have seen, it is like some kind of popularity contest. Having a better looking farm with all the carp that Zynga makes people pay money for, gets players more "stranger" friends that think that they will get good things from people that have better looking farms. It turns out that some of the players look down on others if they don't have the latest crap that Zynga puts out. You are just a nobody if you don't have that 20 dollar 7 spotted cow or whatever it may be. I am not kidding. One stupid little graphic of a cow or whatever to put on your farm will cost $20 worth of whatever that game currency that it uses.

You know that kid awhile back that spent over a thousand dollars of his parent's money on that game, he probably only got like 30 animals, a special house that does nothing but look like a house, a couple different lawn gnomes, and a different colored tractor.(basically stuff the player can just look at and go, "Oooo, pretty".)

With that money, he could of bought a console and a decent library of 10 or more games, or a nice gaming computer and 3 or 4 games. (Stuff that a person can actually use and accomplish things with.)

If there is one thing in the industry that I could remove from existence, it would be Zynga along with everything that it spawned.

What will happen is they start making better games that require more time that real casual player do not have. When those games stop selling, big companies will stop catering to casual markets and the independents will take that place.

Nintendo isn't doomed. If they say that the Iphone crushed the competition, they're wrong. Nintendo has complete stranglehold of the handheld market since Gameboy and continues to be strong with the DS.

Some people like Zynga capitalized on the dearth of casual friendly games accessible to non-gamers. But is that sustainable? Of course not. As more and more game companies realize that there's a market for those games, competition will rise, to gain market share you will need better products. To make better products, well... you'll have to invest more in the design of those games, wont you?

Iwata's not wrong, he's just way ahead of all these "me too" Johnny-come-latelies who are betting on pumping out crap to make money off casual gamers.

Why would anyone pay these people any credence? These are the people who totally missed out on the casual market for the past twenty years, completely ignored its existence, were way late to the show when Nintendo and a few other companies showed it's a huge untapped market, and whose answer was, unlike Nintendo, to pump out fast, crap products made by the worst of their worst designers.

The only thing their loud disagreements show is that they STILL haven't learned anything and are still pathetically trying to superficially copy the success of better managed or more fortunate companies.

Sorry for quoting from page 1 but I need to clear that bit up as I actually have a 3DS now.

Battery life was only less than 5 hours for me (3 hours 30 mins) when I played with full brightness with constant wifi and 3d turned on at all times playing SSFIV3D. The full brightness setting is freaking blinding too. Brightness down to the lowest setting though I got around 5 and a half hours on wifi with 3d and 8 hours without 3d or wifi on the middle setting.

In short the PR we got was worst case scenario which just means that Nintendo PR sucks when getting the message across.

"It is I, clairvoyant gypsy Pachter! Analyst Fanboy Extraordinaire! And I have a warning for Nintendo! In the long term, they are doomed! Doomed! Never mind the fact that they've been going for over 25 years, have made more money than God, Jesus and JK Rowling combined, and have beaten off many a competitor, weathered the storms and consistantly re-invented themselves to remain the most dominant, the most important and the most iconic console manufacturer and game developer in history; I say that it'll happen, so it must be true! I'm a professional troll! You people listen to me! I have my own show on GameTrailers! Why do you all make fun of me!?

And you can expect "quality humour" like that on every new Pachter story from me! Seriously though, can we please just ignore the man? Morons like him are like the grown children who put their fingers in plug sockets, they just want to see how people will react.

vansau:The boldest statement came from industry analyst Michael Pachter. "Long-term, Nintendo is doomed," he said of the company's fight for the handheld market against iOS devices and smart phones. "He's under full frontal assault by Apple."

..great.. more grandstanding and strange insinuations along with quotes out of context. Awesome.

What's interesting about this is that Iwata doesn't want to compete with social interconnected games on multiple platforms - but on closed platforms for a limited market. That's what Apple is doing, and that's what Nintendo is steering harder and harder towards. They've obviously never done anything outside their own platform - but simply categorically dropping the idea of running DS games as applets on smartphones, or expanding them to web-browser games.. It's interesting that Nintendo would declare that direction so clearly.

Meanwhile, this is the opposite of what Sony is doing with their handheld. It's still typically geared on interconnectivity between their own closed platforms, of course. And no doubt the idiots with the money are going to scuttle any sort of real attempt to integrate services across the different platforms (say, video-services they offer internally, or while offering a platform that covers several devices for external services like Netflix, etc). Same with games - having interfaces on game-devices that are interchangeable, as well as a platform with common interfaces, is going to allow branching out to new market-segments. And get games and digital entertainment into the hands of more people, and different people than we have right now.

So that Nintendo is cutting that off - just categorically stating that their entire "from 6 to 60 years" audience isn't going to extend to social gaming on the internet, or across devices - that's the news here. Pachter may or may not be hinting to this, I guess. But he's only ever on target by accident, so who knows..

Singularly Datarific:Haaaa, what an idiot.They've sold 5 times as many DS's than there are Canadians.Doomed my ass.

Not if he's right in 2015. Just because the DS(etc.) is the shit now doesn't mean nintendo are fuckwit proof, plenty of companies have ruined themselves before with willful stupidity.

Nintendo almost bit the big one with the Gamecube, and the Virtual Boy before it (thanks to Lisa Foiles for sharing that). Nintendo aren't immune to big mistakes, but if history is any indicator then the product that follows any disappointment will immediately put Nintendo at the top of the hill again.

"Long-term, Nintendo is doomed," he said of the company's fight for the handheld market against iOS devices

Pachter didn't say nintendo was going die only lose grip on the handheld market to Apple

Sometimes I really do believe that nobody reads anything below the title

Other than that Iwata is puzzling it was casual internet flash/java games that inspired the Wii's direction in the first place, you people have a strange idea of history if you think Nintendo Wii predates PopCap Games

Singularly Datarific:Haaaa, what an idiot.They've sold 5 times as many DS's than there are Canadians.Doomed my ass.

Not if he's right in 2015. Just because the DS(etc.) is the shit now doesn't mean nintendo are fuckwit proof, plenty of companies have ruined themselves before with willful stupidity.

Nintendo almost bit the big one with the Gamecube, and the Virtual Boy before it (thanks to Lisa Foiles for sharing that). Nintendo aren't immune to big mistakes, but if history is any indicator then the product that follows any disappointment will immediately put Nintendo at the top of the hill again.

I doubt Nintendo was ever in any danger of dying over the Gamecube or the Virtual Boy. Aside from the enormous successes of the NES and SNES the Game Boy has been filling Nintendo's bank account since 1989.

Besides, if that statement about success right after a disappointment were true then the Gamecube would have put them on top because the N64 was also a disappointment.

Trust me, Apple can barely do anything against them. Their games are so terrible and try to suck as much money from people as possible. The reason why it's so popular is because of casual gamers, who need a phone and probably won't buy a DS.

The only Wii game that Nintendo's put out that's genuinely lacking in quality or could be considered "bad", (besides Other M, but at least Team Ninja TRIED, it wasn't like they just didn't care) was Wii Music.

All the shovelware on the Wii pretty much amounts to third parties looking at Wii Sports and Wii Fit, assuming that Nintendo put minimal effort into it just because its not a graphically intense, in depth adventure, and then assign their third string teams to cobble together a "Wii (noun/verb)" series wannabe. Then they start complaining when their game sells poorly and blame Nintendo for "dominating the market" with their own games.

I think Miyamoto actually said something to the effect of "Don't assume our Mii based games are just rubbish we slapped together. We put our top teams into those games, third parties have to do the same if you want to sell well.".

That aside, "Nintendo is doomed" is pretty much par for the course whenever Nintendo's on the verge of their greatest success yet.

As long as Metroid, Mario and Zelda exist, the company will never die. Their games have a unique taste that other games cannot match or copy. To delve further into this, Nintendo is always the innovator, while the others follow in their footsteps. Kinect and Move would never have happened without Nintendo, never.

That being said, I don't know if I agree with their statement that the market is shifting towards the more casual games while the big titles don't get attention. Mostly because they rarely make non-casual games anymore if at all. Donkey Kong was the only one in recent memory that I remember destroying me over and over again.

1) Anyone from Zynga and Michael Pachter need to shut up as they have no right talking at all anymore. Zynga because they are money grubbing a-hornes and Pachter because he isn't good at his job anymore. At all.

2) The man is right. Casual games are easy to make and make oodles of money. There are a million variants on Bejeweled out there and they are all basically the same and yet they are making money off em.

It's true that Nintendo could lose the fight against Apple over handhelds.

People unfortunately want overly expensive phones that can play shitty games and run out of battery life so you can't call anyone, instead of a small cheap phone that simply works as intended AND a PSP or (3)DS that can play decent games.

I would want Nintendo to succeed with the 3DS, because it's an ambitious and good gaming device and that effort should be rewarded, but I'm not the average drooling consumer. People want shitty apps, instead of quality.

See, I'm still not convinced that Facebook won't pop. Or that it will be replaced by a similar platform, either. Mainstream audiences are notoriously fickle, as Nintendo is currently discovering through plummetting Wii sales. The 3DS is clearly a more hardcore take on the noticeably casual-friendly DS. They are clearly gearing up for a return to the hardcore, and I'm not ready to dismiss that as a mistake.

The phone app market I'm less concerned about. If it was just Apple, a single slip from them could send the whole thing on a tailspin, but with Android becoming increasingly present, yeah, I do think smartphones are the new PC in that they will become ubiquitous and, like the PC, they will be a great platform for some gaming but still leave a lot of room for home consoles and perhaps even portables to inhabit the market.

If the casual market shifts suddenly, Nintendo would have more to lose than anybody else, so it makes sense for them to be cautiously ahead of the curve to avoid having too much invested there if and when it happens. Publishers and developers can adjust and change, but hardware developers are on a three to five year research and development cycle, and Nintendo was in the middle of a soon-to-be-ruinous bet for the casual market. Their move and Iwata's position make perfect sense to me. Whether or not the 3DS will hold up against the iPhone... well, that's a different question, but "doomed" they aren't. They were in a far worse position when the N64 failed and the GC couldn't turn it back.

SuperTrainStationH:All the shovelware on the Wii pretty much amounts to third parties looking at Wii Sports and Wii Fit, assuming that Nintendo put minimal effort into it just because its not a graphically intense, in depth adventure, and then assign their third string teams to cobble together a "Wii (noun/verb)" series wannabe. Then they start complaining when their game sells poorly and blame Nintendo for "dominating the market" with their own games.

I think Miyamoto actually said something to the effect of "Don't assume our Mii based games are just rubbish we slapped together. We put our top teams into those games, third parties have to do the same if you want to sell well.".

This needed quoting.That's the great thing about the wii, it separated the lazy devs (like Ubisoft) from the smarter devs (like Grasshopper).